Probe finds UNC academic fraud started earlier

Thursday

Dec 20, 2012 at 12:54 PM

EMERY P. DALESIOAssociated Press

CHAPEL HILL | A months-long investigation of academic fraud at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill finds the problems were confined to wrongdoing by the former chairman and an administrator of the school's African studies department and didn't involve other faculty or members of the athletic department, according to a report released Thursday. The report also finds that the problems go back a decade earlier than previously uncovered.

The investigation by former Gov. Jim Martin said the university's Department of African and Afro-American Studies remained at the heart of the two-year athletic and academic scandal that has contributed to the departures of football coach Butch Davis and resignation of Chancellor Holden Thorp.

No other university academic departments allowed students to cheat, but the investigation found the problems in the African studies began in 1997, Martin said. Former African studies chairman Julius Nyang'oro and department administrator Deborah Crowder, both of whom have since retired, were identified in a previous report as carrying out the academic fraud and were solely assigned blame in Martin's report. Neither responded to requests to be interviewed for the investigation, the report said.

No other faculty member was responsible for wrongdoing, Martin said. The probe found unauthorized grade changes that falsely identified other professors as teaching the classes.

"Was it pervasive across this department? No, it was isolated to no more than two officials. Did it extend to other departments? No, it was isolated within this one department. It did not metastasize," Martin told a special meeting of the campus trustees. "We were asked to get to the bottom of academic misconduct. We've done everything in our power to do so."

The probe was launched after the disclosure of the academic transcript of former UNC-Chapel Hill football star and basketball player Julius Peppers. Peppers, who left the university in 2002 to enter the NFL, earned Bs or better in African studies classes but poor grades in many of his other classes. An earlier probe found irregularities dating from 2007 in more than 50 courses where instructors did not teach, grades were changed and faculty signatures were faked on grade reports.

But Martin said flatly there was no evidence the university's athletics department pushed students into courses with known irregularities that would allow athletes to remain eligible for competition.

"This was not an athletic scandal. It was an academic scandal, which is worse. But it was isolated," he said. "There was no coach that knew anything about this. They didn't need to know. That was not their job."

Martin's report "found that these practices were set in place a decade before Butch Davis arrived in Chapel Hill," Sasser said. Davis was hired to coach the Tar Heels in late 2006.

Martin said unauthorized grade changes in the department were not limited to student-athletes. He also told trustees it appeared the department was trying to enlarge enrollment to increase faculty positions.

Martin, a former congressman and chemistry professor at Davidson College, was assisted by consultants practiced in academic investigations. They reported examining all 172,580 course sections with undergraduate students enrolled over an 18-year period from the fall 1994 term through second this past summer term. The review looked at nearly 13,000 instructors teaching nearly 119,000 students.

State Bureau of Investigation agents are continuing their criminal investigation in consultation with a local prosecutor who wants to know whether the university was defrauded for teaching that wasn't delivered.